newness

fifteen days gone fifteen to go in the kickstarter campaign. i make that half way. the good good news is that we are now over 70% of the way to the total which is more than halfway :) . in fact right this moment there is £839 left to raise to reach our total. so we're feeling pretty good about it so far but we're not there yet and it's all or nothing. so as we start week three please back the project. if you have already big thanks! if you have meant to but haven't got round to it then please get round to it this week. and of course being the internet we all live in our own echochambers so please bounce it around your friends' echo chambers and beyond.

even though i feel we have talked about it quite a bit people have still asked me questions so here are a few FAQ

what is it? a zine

what's a zine - maga-zine but it will be more chunky, like a book but not a book, full colour, cool design

what's it about? dreaming of a better world in lots of areas of life - we asked contributors to imagine a different future and then think what we can do now to help that future arrive.

when will it be out? - assuming we reach our target we'll print straightaway so july

are you at greenbelt? good question - yes! we are seeing greenbelt as the official launch of it. greenbelt's theme is acts of imagination - a kind of perfect fit. so there should be a panel there on future present, and some kind of launch party

how does newness happen or emerge? i am fascinated by this question. one way it happens is through feeling your way. this may sound vague or airy fairy but I think it’s an essential part of innovation that is probably either invisible to many or at least hugely underrated. it’s part of a process or what some call a framework for innovation that is quite widely recognised (though not normally called feeling your way). the areas of process that tend to get more attention often come after this. the previous two blog posts focused on the kinds of people who seem to be able to see differently and make things happen and on the kind of environment that creates the air in which creativity and imagination flourish which will lead to innovation. paying attention to the framework and process out of which innovation emerges is a third way of coming at it. of course there isn’t one - there are multiple ways of naming and describing this.

the thing that got me thinking about the value of feeling your way or at least made me realise how much I do this personally was reading mike moynagh’s latest book church In life. i really like this book. in it mike uses emergence and complexity theory to explore a framework of innovation and how newness emerges in relation to new ecclesial communities. i think this is a very dynamic way of approaching contextual mission. it is able to be responsive, flexible, creative, learn from what’s happening, and adapt accordingly. but whether or not that is the focus of your innovation it is really worth paying attention to. the innovation framework he uses describes six processes of innovation, which overlap and feed into each other. They are:

dissatisfaction

exploration

sense making

amplification

edge of chaos

transformation

it’s great to read a book like this that names restlessness, dissatisfaction as a positive thing. lots of organisational cultures prefer to hide dissatisfaction. dave male suggests the same start point in his book how to pioneer. gerald arbuckle names it as grief but is essentially naming the same thing transformation is the result of the other five processes working together in overlapping and interpenetrating ways. dissatisfaction starts you on the journey. you explore through trial and error alongside prayerful attention. sense making turns your exploration into a story i.e. you are reflecting on what’s happening, piecing it together and making sense of it. in other words feeling your way!

crucially this involves plenty of conversation and feedback - so rather than having a solution you land and develop the important thing becomes listening and learning and adapting in the light of feedback. mike suggests it’s a move to ‘act and reflect’ rather than ‘predict and plan’. this reminded me of the iterative process outlined in the lean startup.

in innovation or pioneering in mission there is always a whole lot of uncertainty and feeling your way. In relation to leadership in the church the same point i made in the previous post is true. most preparation and formation in theological colleges is not focused on dealing with flexible, adaptable, responsive leadership - it assumes a much more fixed body of knowledge and practices that leaders will go and lead as they have been trained and all will be well. i think mike’s book is extremely helpful in offering a very different framework of innovation for leadership in mission. it imagines an environment where things are unpredictable, and unknown. i also think the edge of chaos is a fascinating insight. systems and organisations that are very fixed and stable don’t tend to cultivate creativity and innovation - they dampen it or squash it. newness is seen as a threat to order. now you don’t want total chaos but systems that are open to change and newness are nearly always less stable - inside the edge of chaos is the sweet spot. feeling uncertain, knowing things are unpredictable and not being sure what the future might look like whilst knowing the present can’t continue as it is turns out to be a good place to be, perhaps ideal even. It’s reassuring, though depending on your personality may be energising or anxiety inducing. i found it very helpful to have a process named that i feel i do instinctively.

mike has been a great reflector for the church in the uk on cultural change and mission and fresh expressions of church. this post isn’t meant to be a book review though I am writing one for anvil at some point soon which I will post a link to here when I have done it. but I do wholeheartedly recommend it. and in my view mike’s thinking and writing gets better and better.

my son joel studied at chelsea art college. i was really inspired by what i observed of the course he did - it was creative, assignments were stretching and nearly all done as teams, people from various sectors in the creative industries and arts would come and speak, students were encouraged to do real work alongside their training, and the graduate show was mind-blowingly good. i was also regretting having studied maths rather than art myself i think! he was there at the same time that i was designing training for pioneers and i remember thinking that i thought an art school or innovation school was more like what i hoped we could create than a theological seminary. of course we would teach theology, mission, ministry but the environment or air that students breathe needed to be risk taking, creative, free. so when i was last in the institute for contemporary arts bookshop in london i couldn’t resist buying the creative stance. this is a collaboration between art college teachers in london on what makes for a flourishing creative student who trains with them. through their reflection they have come up with seven behaviours and the book is laid out in a series of chapters on each behaviour with a short essay by an artist followed by a discussion on that behaviour with three lecturers often in relation to a particular course. i really loved the book. the seven behaviours are essentially a kind of formation for art students. they are:

i discuss these behaviours with rick lawrence on the podcast i blogged about a few posts back. but i’d like to reflect on them here thinking particularly about theological education because that was the discussion i was in this week - what’s the relationship between theological education and innovation (and by extension ministry and mission practice and innovation).

to take one behaviour, rigour has an essay by grayson perry in which he reflects on two internal characters - hobbit and punk. to be a good artist the hobbit is the character who puts in hours to develop brilliance in skill in a craft - in his case pottery. hobbit alone can make nice pots but in terms of art can be a bit boring. so he also needs punk who is the character who messes with things to make them interesting. this interplay between hobbit and punk makes for a creative approach to art that combines depth of skill with risk taking imagination and innovative practice. the essay is actually available in the latest edition of creative review and is free if you sign up. it’s totally brilliant! when asked what advice he would give to an artist student perry says - ‘turn up on time, be nice, and put in the hours’. you can see where i am going with this - this is so resonant with pioneers. i suspect they are more attracted to punk than hobbit. but in theological education (and in the church generally) i bump into a lot more hobbits than punks. but it’s a great idea to nurture both aspects.

i won’t elaborate on all the behaviours - you can get the book but here are a few quotes and ideas i jotted down that caught my attention.

curiosity is foundational. if you are not curious you’ll stay on a safe path.

Curiosity is the substrate of creativity, overlaid by an appetite for risk, necessarily followed by determination

i fear that safety is a problem in theological education and the church - we are generally risk averse which is ironic because probably the theologians and saints we admire are/were curious and risk taking. but various traditions of theology have systematised it and made it about information and right doctrine rather than a quest that is creative in response to the tradition and context and the spirit. and i think there can easily be an atmosphere of anxiety and fear about getting things right rather than one of exploration and play. art school gives people the confidence to make a dangerous decision - does theology school i wonder?

risk is…

the enemy of your own and other peoples certainty. A state of optimistic dissatisfaction, of relentless questioning. A preoccupation with quality without regard for the established order.

how do you involve students in risk?

You show them things that they probably haven’t thought about before and that aren’t necessarily part of that central canon.

the authors suggest that art schools should be creating the kind of graduates that can rock boats rather than row boats, that question and push. and they lament that the curriculum is currently too related to industry because of pressures. has play been ruined because it has to be turned to money? we might say the same of ministry students who are under pressure from industry a.k.a. church growth. the authors suggest that playfulness should be applied to everything and every moment you’re alive… a way of being.

ambiguity is fascinating i think. it requires doubt and where there is doubt there is great space for imagination. art students need to learn to transgress rules and fixed boundaries and conventions forging new paths where no one has trodden before. this sounds like a mantra for pioneers and cross cultural mission. but i have not seen this in much theological education i have visited so far.

for a world that is changing and in need of change creatives need flexibility, adaptability, openness, vulnerability, resourcefulness, avoidance of monocultures (which are fragile rather than resilient). the church needs the same - it really does.

and i found it interesting that the exact same challenge i described in the last post of people who remake the world in order to create solutions is nurtured in arts students. they

reshape the world to contain the artwork you make, to create a new reality - because it’s never been enough just to make the art

(substitute the word theology for art)

there is a lovely section where a lecturer from chelsea art college ponders the percentage of students who go on to be artists and make a life in it which is quite small. but he then lists what they do go on to do in a wonderful list of enterprises, community development, change agents, educators and so on. in other words a creative education enables them to have agency out of who they are to participate in making the world a better place.

anyway you get the point. when you look at a formation that nurtures a creative stance there is so much for theological and mission education to learn. but the contrast with what is valued and in the air in theological colleges is stark. if we want innovation maybe we need students to breathe different air, art school air?!

this reminded me too of will gompertz's book think like an artist which i have blogged about before. in that he has a whole section on education generally and why it should be like art school which i loved. he says

Art school or not students need to leave education as independently minded, intellectually curious, self confident and resourceful - prepared for and excited by the future and what they might be able to contribute to it. The future depends on us taking a different approach.

i couldn’t agree more.

(thanks to the baptist theological educators forum who invited me to reflect on formation and theological education with them earlier this year that enabled me to develop this particular sideways strain of thought)

i keep talking to people about innovation. i have a ton of thoughts that have been knocking around my head for a while in the areas of change, newness, innovation, imagination, pioneering, mission and changing the world! so i will try and find some space for some blog posts. life is sadly too busy to blog enough but i must blog! i was prompted by this today because i was having a conversation with some good friends about theological education and innovation and whether they do or don't go together easily. i'll come back to that in another post. several of the posts will be about books i have read.

i have pondered several times in the last few years why i spend more money when i am in an art bookshop than a theology one - see a tale of two bookshops where i suggest that it's because they seem concerned with changing the world and not just art. i have found myself almost repeating that exact same experience only with a different set of books - all of which i hope i will say something about in these posts...

i love people who come up with ideas that solve problems. i especially love it when to solve a particular problem you actually have to reimagine the world in order to solve the problem because the paradigm itself is part of the problem. it's akin to the future present imagination that i have blogged about before.

we do things differently is a book of stories of outsiders rebooting our world by mark stevenson. i nearly didn't buy the book because it has a terrible cover but i am glad i got beyond that. it is an incredible book that filled me with hope. let me mention two stories from it to give you the flavour. one that i mentioned at the new parish conference is of peter dearman who has invented an engine that emits zero carbon. he initially began by messing around with his lawnmower and antifreeze. as an engineer he figured that what drives a piston is temperature change and you could drive a piston by moving the temperature from sub zero to zero if you used liquid nitrogen (along with isothermal expansion). i won't bore you with the details but he has invented an engine that is not oil dependant, and has a bi-product of refrigeration which in hot climates with a lot of food wastage is brilliant. you can read about the dearman engine here.

i also loved the story of the indian scientist samir brahmachari. finding new medicines is and has been a really interesting and potentially life saving area. turberculosis is a disease of the poor so drug companies simply haven't come up with new new medicines to treat the increasingly drug resistant types. further the way drug companies go about it is a multi billion dollar expense to find a new drug which involves thousands of failures. samir's approach was to find a new process by tackling the genome annotation for tb - over four million letters. for one person to do the work would take 300 years. so he effectively created a wikipedia for science students in india to work on particular aspects of the task. through this process they found 350 people who were good and to cut a long story short the results were amazing - the most comprehensively annotated tuberculosis genome in history completed in four months and published online free!!! through this he then found people to create a computer model of tuberculosis bacterium that he could experiment on virtually. once they built that (which was complex) they open sourced it. and through participation 11 weaknesses to explore in the code were identified and the latest was that a cheap drug which already exists for diabetes can be used for tb. i don't claim to follow the details of the science but i found this story compelling. it's compelling because samir who is clearly a genius has to break through the old ways of doing things and imagine very differently to come up with a solution. you would think that the drugs world would be all over it but unsurprisingly he meets incredible difficulty - he is maligned in journals, poo pooed by experts and of course his whole approach is a threat to the economics of the system. it's hard to argue with him though when he says -

'we don't believe in the western concept of knowledge being proprietary. i'm not in this for wealth but because i would like to see reduction in death'

wow - i am on board!

the book is full of stories of such people who have to reimagine the way the world is organised in order to come up with a solution to the problem - the stories relate to energy, education, drugs, agriculture, engineering, the environment, food production, cities...

thank god for the gift of such seers/innovators - i love that they exist and it fills me with hope. of course i am reading a parallel with pioneers in my own context.

the amount of difficulty they all have is extraordinary - whether it's farming or oil or drugs industries they do not like a threat to the existing system even if it's clear that system needs to change because there are vested interests (and money!) and frankly a lack of desire to even listen to or see the new solutions. (so it's not just the church that is resistant to change as it happens - it's normal for pioneers all over to experience this kind of resistance sadly and i think we should all wise up about that).

connecting people together becomes really important for support, for encouragement, for hope. this is why i was stressing the importance of getting yourself connected in my last post on the value of networks.

two web sites that are connecting people producing the kinds of futuring solutions in this book are really worth looking up -

i am teaching MA students today on a leadership module at cms pioneer training and exploring dissent for leadership. this has led to me re-reading gerald arbuckle's refounding the church - what a book! it is honestly the most helpful book i think i have read related to pioneering ever. here's a quote from the book for today's presentation...

i have written a reflection for this month's youthwork blog. it seems as though there is a mood in youthwork circles that some change s needed so i share a few thoughts gleaned from work with pioneers on how newness might come through a cycle of grief, dreams and building.

every organisation, institution, business has to negotiate change. the rapid changes in the wider culture and perhaps especially in technology in the last 30 years make it feel as though change is the new constant. i happen to quite like change and newness but i realise not everyone does. it can certainly generate anxiety and fear in good measure. and in many places there is a very real sense of pressure. the new environment seems to call for flexibility, adaptability and improvisation. however when the pressure is on there is always the opposite instinct at play - defence of what already is, the status quo, at all costs and resistance to change.

in the next few days the church of england governing body general synod is receiving several reports. they were published a couple of weeks ago - on discipleship, simplification, resourcing the future and resourcing ministerial education. they have a focus on mission, growth and investing better in those at the margins which in itself is encouraging (though i realise 'growth' is a complicated word that has had a backlash from those who see it tied to measures of success and effectivenes making the church sound like a business). the church of england is full of surprises! i realise a blog post about some church reports might not sound that interesting but in their own way they are putting before the church questions about the inevitable incoming future and whether the church of england will act on the basis of courage or fear. without question she has to change!

i won't go through all the reports here but the one of most interest to me personally and the pioneer leadership training at cms is the resourcing ministerial education one which stresses the need to train people for adaptibility and flexibility for the future. it is also the most far reaching in its proposals. in my view by far the most interesting and long overdue proposal is to rapidly develop lay ministries and increase numbers and to that end developing a stream of funding for lay ministry training especially to resource the future. this will be funding training in a similar way to ordinands. my own take on the various streams that have brought challenge and renewal at the edges of the church in the last thirty years is that they have been largely lay led - in many cases unpaid, untrained and not licensed as well! the majority of pioneers training at cms are in this category. this is genuinely exciting news. it will be for ministry that is licensed but at cms last year we admitted 8 people as lay workers in the church of england which we can do because we are a religious community of the church - i am one myself. i'm slightly pinching myself on this as it's as though we have set something up that has anticipated this future. if this goes through it looks as though people in the church of england could train with us to pioneer and get fees paid for.

there is also recognition that training that is on the job or in-context produces good results and they are trying to encourage development of more pathways like this that are within reach of people who are training whilst working which is a good model and will generate innovation especially if the matched funding proposed is agreed to. this is causing great anxiety amongst providers of residential training who will no doubt be on the defensive at synod. both have their place and as far as i can see a mixed economy of provision is envisaged but for pioneers, on the job training is both recommended and the only way i would ever be interested in training pioneers. it's also so much better value - i know people hate discussions around money but money is a real issue in pretty much every diocese. there will be opportunity for innovation here for colleges who have almost exclusively focused on training ordinands because that is where the money has been. the proposal on money is that there will be a standard grant allocation that a diocese will decide how to spend on approved providers.

the report proposes increasing ordination numbers especially younger and i hope that pioneer numbers will get back on the up - we'll see. dioceses will have more say about the training pathways. they want to review and streamline selection process, presumably for pioneers too so it is done in a year. individuals pathways for training will be more flexible. they are proposing tough limits on age by making dioceses pay for over 50s. there will be money available for leadership development beyond the first phase of training.

in other words it's proposing something of a sea change. i think it's exciting, challenging, and hopeful. it's not without its problems and more work needs to be done. for example i think the critique of business approaches and language is welcome. i liked linda woodhead's challenge in the church times and on tv to not collapse the church into a congregational paradigm or a clerical paradigm but to retain a vision of church in society and public life. decisions won't be made on details - i think it will be a discussion and then voting to give permission for the reports to be taken forward. the key issue for me is imagination. i have in my mind arbuckle's phrase 'culture eats strategies for breakfast' and hope that the culture of the church doesn't eat these up but has the imagination to see ahead. don't be afraid synod!

i appreciate that this blog is currently something of a slow burn, such is my busy life! but a massive thank you to those of you who still patiently hop onto the flow whether via a feed, twitter, facebook or the occasional digital drop in. i hope as you look back on 2014 you have some consoling thoughts and find hope for the year ahead even if it is against the odds.

a while back i posted a tale of two bookshops in which purchased four books at the ICA bookshop. i have enthused about two of them so far - feral (my book of the year i think and george monbiot is the person i would most like to be put in charge of running the country), and exploring everything.

well the third of the four is radical imagination. i bought this because i can't resist anything about imagination - one of the most underrated and undervalued aspects of what it is to be human. but i didn't read the small print - it turns out it's a book about social research amongst activist movements. but i ended up loving it and learning a load. there is a web site related to it that aims to study, broadcast and celebrate the intelligence, passion and creativity of social movements. of course the church is a social movement (though of course it is curiously part of the establishment in places too!). this book has lots to say to those of us interested in the transformation of society especially seeking to imagine a different kind of society and world that does not have to be the way it is now, and as part of that those of us seeking to effect change in and through following in the way of jesus christ (one heck of an activist!).

the single idea that has stuck with me the most and anyone who knows me well will have been subjected to it over a meal conversation or a work discussion is prefigurative research. what the authors mean by this is to design the present on the basis of an imagined future that is not already here. in their case they are based in universities and don't like the way the academic world is configured so they imagine how the university might be and design research on the basis of that - i.e. it prefigures it rather than settling for the current status quo. brilliant eh?

so on the first day of the year what kind of world, society, economy, neighbourhood, community, business, or church do you imagine might be possible? and how can you live in the present in a way that flows from that radical imagination? i feel challenged about the training of pioneers i lead at cms - have we done enough imaginative work of what is possible out of which to design our training? we do love imagination but i am stirred up to do some more. i am sick the culture of greed in the wider powers that be and the systematic grinding down of the poor and it seems to me that here more than anywhere we need this radical kind of approach.

i also like the positive and yet honest way that haven and khasnabish talk about social movements. it's interesting to overlay this with whatever networks or movements yoiu have been or are part of such as transition towns, emerging church, pioineering mission or whatever. here's a few notes and quotes i jotted down for myself when i read it...

Take social movements seriously as fecund ecologies ripe with possibility

Movements can be alternative spaces of social reproduction, places where individuals and communities can re-create themselves and find support for doing so.

Social movements are driven by and co-create the radical imagination: shared landscapes of possibility and contestation that confront and contradict the reigning imaginaries of capital and power.... It is not something individuals have but is something networks, groups, movements do. It emerges from and guides collective doing...

it reminded me just how important communities are in which conversation is happening about the world and change. three things i do that this has helped me continue to value are meet with friends over a meal most weeks one evening to linger at the table, talk, share life, dream and pray; a couple of times a year through the team i work with host a 24 hour dreaming space in which we go away and take on a theme or idea and explore it; and connect/network with others who share similar vision and passion around transformation. this is all part i guess of building infrastructures of dissent as they are described on the web site (i love that phrase - reminds me of the great mission thinker john taylor's notion of cells of dissent).

the book is also a reminder of how valuable research is. they see research as part of how movements are carried forward and propose the idea of a solidarity research strategy that opens up a commions for the imagination through community and participation. so their research involves facilitating focus groups, hosting events, and even a radical imagination festival. one of the issues for activists and i suspect a lot of us in many walks of life is that you get bogged down in the day to day task. one thing research does is pull people together to reflect and talk about what is going on with others. it opens time and spaces in a cycle of imagination, strategy and tactics. the kinds of questions researchers facilitate conversation about are

what events or ideas brought you to pioneering work and (how) have your thoughts changed through your involvement?

what is the role of the imagination in your movement and your own pioneering?

what would it mean to win? What’s your vision of a better society? Do these visions matter to you and your movement?

what are the barriers to the radical imagination that you face?

i have changed politics to pioneering in the questions above to see how it crosses over into mission. i should have said that the project is grounded in the particular - in hamilton canada - so it's not just an abstract set of ideas. it really is involved in a movement for change.

a running joke with pioneers at cms and indeed some others is how much i am a fan of gerald arbuckle's writing. to be honest it's all fair - i am a fan! anyway i am delighted he has contributed a chapter to the pioneer gift book. when he was over i interviewed him around the themes of dissent. grief, mourning, pioneers, and newness! the video is around 5 minutes long and is one of five from authors of chapters in the book...

adam curtis and robert del naja were interviewed last night on bbc 6music by mary anne hobbs. the full interview was aired on stuart maconie's freak zone. it will be up on iplayer for the week and begins at about 44mins in. parts of it were also aired on mary anne hobbs breakfast shows on sat and sun.

one of the questions mary anne hobbs asks adam curtis is are we really free?

in response he suggests that the issue he is trying to explore in the film is how power works, how it pervades our lives - not just through westminster but through popular culture. one of the examples he gives is the feedback loops that are going on around us all the time thorugh computers - you like this so you'll like that. we've probably got so used to it now that we don't think about it. we're continually being given what we liked yesterday.

he suggests that the idea of the film/experience was to pull back like a helicopter to enable people to stop and see this static managed world (what he calls the pervasive ideology of our time). and he then muses whether we are really free?.. we're free to have what they think you like. is that freedom? it's a kind of static or limited freedom where you are stuck in your own yesterday!

i thought this was such a good line - stuck in your own yesterday. it's back to the previous post in some ways - with this approach to reality ideas and possibilities that are new will never emerge - they will be perceived as risky, unprovable, unmeasurable, and a threat. yet when we are stuck precisely what we need is this genuine kind of newness.

what an extraordinary insight! i think this is true in many businesses, lots of the social/charity sector and the church. we elevate managers and prefer and feel safer with them than visionaries and dreamers in top leadership positions. this may be because of fear of money, the future or simply we want to feel we can control things as best we can. and i also think it is also a really bad habit. shoot me down on this or tell me it's not true - but i am now seeing it everywhere where last week i was used to business as usual!

the article includes the words that were projected at the end of the film which i was trying to remember. they are:

every year there is a 24 hour get together of people in a region of 5 dioceses in the central south who are involved in theological education. the last few years i've been along and they always manage to find a very stimulating speaker to get conversation started. this year it was graeme codrington of the tomorrow today project who describes himself as a futurist. really what this means is talking about cultural changes in a number of areas and helping businesses, schools, churches and whoever think about the implications. i actually knew graham some years back when he was involved in youth ministry (an area in which people are always interested in the changes in culture of course).

all that is by way of saying that we had a pretty interesting discussion today around this question -

If the old logic won't work how do we find a new logic for the moment?

i had lots of suggestions to make but if you have any thoughts leave a comment!

a second and related quote from mark twain was also memorable

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble it's what you know for sure…

well that's the theme of greenbelt next year as she turns 40 and looks back and looks forward. this year greenbelt as ever was a delight - a hopeful sign of the kingdom of god and what the church can be at her best - creative, searching, diverse, hopeful, honest, celebratory, learning, welcoming, human, spiritual, on the way to a better world, healing. my favourite moment i think was hearing bruce cockburn sing 'lovers in a dangerous time' with that immortal line - you got to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight. showing my age but i probably first heard him sing that getting on for 25 years ago. greenbelt was the muddiest i can remember since the year goldie was DJing in a tent next to one where grace were leading quiet worship! greenbelt was also the moment i think i will have transitioned into being 'harry baker's dad' as he rocked greenbelt with his sensational poetry off the back of his edinburgh shows - so exciting to see...

seemed like an appropriate blog post title too. after greenbelt it always feels like the chilled summer season is definitely over and the mayhem is about to start! i am gearing up for a new intake of students later in september on the cms pioneer mission leadership training including our first intake of pioneer ordinands and the addition of a new MA in pioneer ministry. we'll also be switching accrediting body to the university of durham over the next two years which whatever way you look at it will create work. so time to get cracking...

thanks to everyone who bothered to get up and come to the session i spoke at on monday morning - i was amazed anyone was there! if you liked the content you might like this series on newness -

letters home is a bulletin aimed at those like CMS who are in new mission communities or orders or sodalities (yes jargon I know but probably useful as a term) and definitely aimed at pioneers. it is edited by beth keith and this is how she describes it...

Letters Home is a collection of thoughts, struggles and dreams; it is in fact a collection of letters home. A collection of letters written by pioneers who have followed the call to go beyond the Church as is. We chose Letters Home because they want to stay connected, stay in touch, and because home is not just where they’ve come from but a family they still belong to.

When we were putting it together it felt like an odd mix combining research, theology, parable and meditation. But it felt important to mix it up. It’s in the mix we find ourselves, combining gut instincts with rationale observations, thought through prac- tices with missional spirituality. The exploration we’re involved in requires all of this.

the first issue explores the tensions pioneers experience as they go beyond the existing church. it is totally brilliant. pour a cup of coffee or something, and sit down and chew over the contents.

beth present's what she has called elsewhere the pioneer's journey. this shouts so loudly to me that pioneers are really well advised to connect with a mission community or network (a sodality).

i really loved a piece by simon sutcliffe reflecting on the pioneer as guest. he creates a map of pioneering that has three types - pioneering in existing structures, creating fresh expressions and the ministry of wandering or being a guest (or sodal pioneer). this is a really helpful piece. i suspect that many in the church think of pioneer as either one or two but life becomes more complicated if you want to pioneer in the last category and dare I say more exciting, unknown, and wild...

if you were at the dreamers who do event yesterday, as i mentioned i originally put the material together for a gathering of pioneers in the uk called breakout. the talks and slides and quotes are all available to download here. at the end of the notes is a list of links for books, research material and so on. it was great to see you there.

this is a post on newness in relation to the church in mission. i can't think what language might be more general that would apply in other sectors. perhaps intentional community? leave a comment if you have ideas of that...

there is a stereotype of a pioneer as a lone individual who goes off to stick their flag in the land to begin something new. there is also a stereotype of a prophet who lives alone in the wilderness communing with god and appearing occasionally to deliver their message. but in terms of newness i think these are really unhelpful pictures. the kind of imagining out of which genuine newness might emerge is much more likely a communal one. in the case of prophets in the old testament there were certainly schools of prophets and i suspect pioneers were rarely alone. the nurturing of an alternative consciousness and imagination will surely come through dreaming and reflecting with others, knocking around ideas, eating together and conversation and nurturing the kind of environment in which poets and artists gifts can flourish. for this sort of environment there needs to be something intentional about community. i think this is particularly the case when we are all so co-opted by the dominant culture of consumption, and the dominant culture of business as usual in our churches. how will we find space to detox and grieve and imagine alternative worlds are possible and be energised in hope towards them? it needs a depth of community and relationship to have any kind of chance of developing a missional discipleship. but i am beginning to wonder in our world of loose networks and 'friends' if we have forgotten that to find depth in relationships requires commitment, or to use an old fashioned word fellowship which as andrew jones has pointed out originally meant buying into a cow or something together! i.e. you put your commitment on the line.

connectivity is crucial for innovation as i have blogged in the previous post connect don't protect. but loose networks and 'friends' in social networks don't afford the kind of depth required for prophetic imagination and community. they are opt in when i feel like it arrangements - typical of the postmodern avoidance of fixation or commitment. jump on board when something interesting is flowing and jump off when something else catches my attention.

perhaps one of the reasons for the resurgence of interest in monasticism is because of wisdom around community life and how to find this missing depth - in grace we were helped many years ago by roy searle's ( of the northumbia community) insights that ethos is central to community life and to see a function of leadership as guarding ethos. developing a rhythm and/or rule of life, practices of contemplative spirituality, hospiltality and lots of other things could also be seen as treasures. ian adams cave refectory road is a delightful book in which he explores some of these.

i am particularly interested in the ways that religious communities have (and might still) nurtured prophets, dissenters and refounding persons in the past. gerald arbuckle has written at length on this (yes sorry - arbuckle again!). in from chaos to mission he looks at formation and how that might be refounded in religious communities precisely to cultivate this sort of newness. one of the things that he highlights in a very helpful way is that it is not monasticism per se that forms people in this way. it's a very mixed picture. in particular, it is not a cloistered (or residential) monasticism that we should look to if weʼre interested in prophetic ministry and mission. the purpose of formation in cloistered orders was obedience and conformity and stability in an unchanging world. but for the spread out orders (friars) - the likes of the jesuits and fransiscans and celts - prophetic mission to the world was at the heart of their concern which requiried radical flexibility and imagination. the purpose of formation in the spread out communities or mission orders of friars is inculturation - i.e. innovation in relation to gospel and cultures. being part of a mission community like this formed people to engage in prophetic mission.

he suggests that denominatons struggle to contain this gift and people. they simply don't know what to do with it or them. it makes far more sense all round that these mission communities nurture and form the dissenters/prophetic ministry. the religious communties are then a 'shock therapy of the holy spirit for the church as a whole'! especially if they are actually ecclesial (part of church in and of themselves) as opposed to para church (a bit on the side of church).

i say a bit more about all this in the breakout talks and this blog post is in danger of going on rather a long time! but research is backing this up - pioneers are far better placed to bring genuine newness today when they are located in and out of a mission community/order (such as cms, church army, urban expression, the methodist venture fx diaconate etc).

this is by far the hardest piece to write so far in this series and is in many ways the most contentious, if not weird - i welcome any feedback and discussion on it. the implications are pretty huge if it is anywhere near correct... if you are a dissenter/pioneer/prophetic or whatever language you prefer get in an intentional mission community of some sort. and if you are in a denominational or equivalent structure looking for newness make friends with those in a mission community and ask them to work with you and with anyone you nurture in this prophetic mission to help form their prophetic imagination and to connect them in with a community that gets it and them. it's why am a member of cms - a mission community. it nurtures me into this kind of imagination and ministry and mission.

(if this is all too established i think it might translate for non conformists at the local level into small mission communities gathered around shared ethos values and practices and those communities networking together but with some genuine buy in and not just a loose network?)

perhaps this should have come much earlier in this series but prophetic imagination is key to nurturing genuine newness. imagination is hugely under-rated. i have no idea why. anything that has been created someone must have imagined. without imagination there will be no newness. prophetic imagination is the kind of imagination that is able to nurture a vision that is alternative to the dominant or royal consciousness. it is a kind of seeing.

It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjouring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.

walter bruegemann's book the prophetic imaginaton is amazing on this theme. he suggest that there are two moves in this prophetic imagining - grief and amazement. i have blogged at least twice on this before and quite recently - grief and amazement, and grief and amazement in the life of jesus. the role of the prophet is to evoke grief - the shedding of tears where we have become numb, and it is to create amazement that new worlds are possible. he also calls these two moves criticising and energising. we might conceive of this in relation to capitalism or where the church has become stuck and wedded to particular ways of acting and being and so on.

there are many ways of thinking about mission. it's partly why it is such a rich way of thinking about what it means to follow christ. one that i often come back to is a way john taylor describes it in the primal vision. he suggests that we could conceive of mission as an adventure of the imagination.

one of the mission words i incresingly find helpful is inculturation which is the process of how the gospel will be imagined and embodied in a culture from the inside. it sounds simple but it is clearly much harder than you might think judging by the ways foreign cultural robes are imposed from the outside in new cultural spaces. bevans and schroeder have a new book out prophetic dialogue which i will review at some point (it is brilliant) which has a chapter on the spirituality of inculturation which i found incredibly helpful on how to help nurture a genuine newness in mission. they suggest that there are two different postures or stances of those who come from outside a culture and those who are on the inside. the outsiders key task is letting go:

Outsiders need to let go of their certainties regarding the content of the gospel. They need to let go of cherished practices and ideas that have nourished and sustained them in their own journeys towards christian maturity. They need to let go of the symbols that anchor them in their human and christian identity and let go of the order that makes them comfortable….

One of the hardest and yet most spiritually enriching tasks of the outsider is 'taking leave of the gospel' so to speak for the sake of the gospel - so that the gospel can be understood in a radically new and meaningful way among new peoples and in new circumstances.

by way of contrast the insider's task is speaking out. they need to trust in their culture and experience and result in a courage that gives energy insight and creativity to articulate how god is present in their lives, focusing on god's nearness in the stuff of everyday life. the insider needs courage to experiment, to risk, to try new rituals, explore new symbols, to have pride in their culture and self identity and risk going too far in bringing the resources of their culture to christian identity.

this is strong stuff! i am convinced that there is great wisdom here if genuine newness is to come in mission. what does this mean in practice? there are plenty of examples of the outsider/insider relationship in stories of mission. sadly many of these don't involve enough letting go from the outsider so we have cultural forms of the church that are overly western in many parts of the world and ongoing struggles around that. but there are also many inspiring stories in mission of how this has worked well. what it might mean for me is that if (and i am not planning to at the moment) i were to move into a new community, i would need to let go of my own ways of worshipping - liturgies, music, movies, rituals and so on, and even the way i conceive of the gospel, in order that insiders might be able to discern and shape that from the inside.

this 'letting go' of the outsider clearly relates to unknowing and darkness which will need to be entered to alow the new to emerge. it also relates to refounding - i am not suggesting a letting go that is a move away from the heart of the christian faith. but this needs to be held in some kind of tension for the outsider.

in the book where good ideas comestephen johnson is interested in discovering what kind of environment enables innovation to thrive. so for example he writes about research that shows that a city of 5 million is 3 times as creative as a town of a hundred thousand because of the natural way it's possible to collide with other people and ideas. it made me glad i live in london! by way of a summary statement jonson says this

We are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.

ideas flow best in unregulated channels in open environments. this is instinctive to people in the new networked culture but much harder for organisations to wrap their heads round perhaps especially at times of financial pressure when to give and share may seem counter intuitive. in a fascinating piece of research johnson plots inventions in blocks of two hundred years along the axis of market/non-market and individual/network. it completely shatters the image of the lone inventor. the last two hundred years have seen by far the most innovation in the fourth quadrant - non market networked.

he also talks about what he calls exaptation - borrowing an idea from one area and applying it to another. so for example the gutenburg printing press would possibly not have been invented if gutenberg wasn't interested in winemaking. his genius was bricolage from a number of different areas to create the printing press including ideas from the wine press. he also cites a survey of 766 entrpreneurs by ruef which highlights that the most creative individuals had broad social networks that were outside both their own organisations and their own fields of expertise. diverse horizontal networks were three tims more innovative than vertical networks. and groups that are familiar and long term tend to dampen innovation.

i have blogged at length before about clay shirky's book here comes everybody - 1234 which looks at network theory and the importance of connectors who focus outside of their small world to increase energy in networks which demonstrates in a different way the same point. one of the creative tips in a whack on the side of the head is to look outside your own area. margaret wheatley's magnificent book leadership and the new science suggests that a very different mindset is required in leaders who operate in this new environment of connectedness.

some organisations have famously sought to encourage this in their staff. so google for example encouraged staff to spend 20% of time following up connections, exploring, nurturing hunches with great effect, enabling serendipitous moments.

it goes without saying that the the internet has opened up connectivity in extraordinary ways. those people who moan about it and see it as a waste of time are somewhat missing the point. that's not to say that all internet use will lead to innovation. it's equally possible to live in a bubble with familiar connections and relationships and web sites that can be very dull and stagnant. instead explore tangents, follow hunches, get curious, connect with new people outside your area of interest and so on.

so what? connect and nurture connections beyond your own area. meet people, drink coffee, exploring hunches, operate out of a posture that seeks to open source and share ideas rather than batton down the hatches.

in terms of newness in the church which is of particular interest to me, this is a hard reflex to develop. theological positions are often entrenched and defended. people go to their tribe's festival, read their tribe's books, do their tribe's leadership training, meet their tribe in coffee houses and so on. it's easy to end up in a loop that is quite small, self referential and ultimately uncreative because of fear. this is equally true of progressive as of conservative as of emerging as of orthodox as of liberal as of evangelical as of catholic etc. by contrast, the body of christ is an extraordinary network of connections that opens up all sorts of amazing possibilities with a different set of instincts out of which much newness could and i hope will come.

this may seem a strange theme to follow on from refounding but it's equally a theme on creativity in lots of peoples writing and in my own experience. perhaps an example is the easiest way to get at this...

i vividly remember feeling that grace had got stuck some years back and that we needed to stop the way we were doing things in order to be able to find something new. in practice this meant stopping weekly meetings and letting go of what we were doing. we had a grace service where we wrote down things that we held dear about grace on plates and smashed them and the word grace on a mirror was smashed with a sledge hammer. this was in part inspired by ikon's service at greenbelt exploring eckhart's god rid me of god prayer. what felt scary about this was that we hadn't worked out what came next and had to trust it would emerge. our sense was that until you let go of the old or in some cases kill it the new simply can't emerge. it would be so much simpler and safer and easier of course if you did know what came next but it just doesn't work like that! and often that season of limbo goes on longer than you think.

writers variously call this experience liminalty (maybe being in limbo is a more common way of expressing it - inbetween), darkness, chaos, unknowing. jenny wrote a couple of brilliant pieces of liturgy that captured this moment in grace - we are creatures of comfort and god of broken people and places . i love the line - nothing good or creative emerges from business as usual...

the most extreme version of this is death! i was reminded of this in a quote from steve jobbs that was all over the papers this last week following his own death where he says that death clears out the old to make way for the new. jesus said something similar (i am not for a moment trying to equate the two persons btw!) - unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed. but it needs wisdom to know what needs to die and when and i have no idea how you discern such things or persuade others.

here's a couple of quotes from arbuckle on this (yes sorry there had to be a quote)

To sit in the liminality or the darkness/chaos of not knowing without distractions or the escapism of busyness is the way to new insights. (in refounding the church)

Though experiences of this kind can be confusing, even terrifying, paradoxically contact with chaos or the world of the unpredictable or the unkown is critical if there is to be creativity in life or culture. Innovative scientists, poets, philosophers, artists, refounding people of organisations or cultures, all have one thing in common: they venture into the unkown, into the unpredictable, into chaos, in search of new meanings or new ways of doing things.(in out of chaos:refounding religious congregations)

it sounds straightforward enough but it takes courage to be in this space and to lead others into this space. the temptation is to try and curtail it and move on. it's especially difficult if you have no money and others dependent on you asking for some strategy wondering what on earth is going on! i can think of a couple of people who are training with us as pioneers at cms who have been in this sort of a space or scenario in the last year. out of it has come and is coming wonderful new things and this phase was crucial to that. but it's a hard journey at times. as leaders it requires the ability to live with unknowing and chaos. and in the letting go of the old, communities often need space to grieve what is being lost, before they are ready to move towards the new. it was instinctive at the time but ritualising this moment in grace really powerfully helped us let go and greive and eventually embrace the new out of which so much life has come.

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